THINKING ABOUT CHRISTIAN MUSIC
This is a site dedicated to the dissemination of effective Christian music.
In this regard let me present a series of secular opinions on the power of music and to encourage you to re-examine the so-called “Christian Music Scene” in light of this.
The infamous Dr Timothy Leary of “Flower Power” fame;
“Don’t listen to the words. It is the music that has its own message. I’ve been stoned on the music many times”.
Jimmi Hendrix: Rock musician
“There’s a sound, a vibration, a resonance that can re-arrange the molecular structures of our consciousness to the point where your hair stands on end and you feel like touching bodies. It is a whole other kind of spirit”.
Rock historian Robert Palmer:
“I believe in the transformative power of Rock’n’Roll in its sound and beat”.
Psychology Today Dec 1985
“Musical rhythms affect both our hearts and our brains. One road to arousing a range of agitated feelings is through pronounced, insistent rhythms artfully used to heighten sexual tension. Drumming may produce these powerful effects by actually driving the brain’s electrical rhythms”.
Robert Shaw, renowned Choir director and musician,
“I don’t know if the church today understands the music it has brought into the church. People do not understand the music…..it is perverse”.
Billy Joel
“You know, all those things that were said in the early days about Rock’n’Roll that it is going to subvert our youth, make them want to have sex and go crazy. They were right”!!
Psychologist Verle Belle:
“One of the most powerful releasers of andrenacine highs is music which is discordant in its beats and chords. Good music follows exact mathematical rules which cause the mind to feel comforted, encouraged and safe”.
If we say that the sound is irrelevant so long as the lyrics are “Christian” we have to ask what happens to our integrity when we shoe-horn a message about obeying authority into a genre that is essentially rebellious and nihilistic in style.
When the words and sound are thus in conflict, musicologists call this “Aesthetically false”.
Finally a word or two from antiquity
SU CHING from 6th century China
“For changing peoples’ manners and customs there is nothing better than music”
CONFUCIUS 500 BC
“If you would know whether a people are well governed and if its laws are good or bad, examine the music it practises”.
ARISTOTLE 340 BC
“If over a long time one habitually listens to the kind of music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form”.
Hope this is food for thoughtful and prayerful consideration.
Geoff Catford
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THINKING ABOUT CHRISTIAN MUSIC